Previous around-the-world flights

Gillespie: TIME magazine saw Earhart's world flight as an over-hyped publicity stunt. What was different about it from the six previous aerial circumnavigations was that Earhart was aiming to be the first woman pilot to circle the globe.

"Between 1924 and 1933 the globe was girdled six times by aircraft. Last year, when Pan American Airways started carrying passengers across the Pacific, reporters Herbert Ekins and Leo Kieran circled the globe on commercial lines. Soon after, Pan American’s President Juan Terry Trippe and a party of friends also flew around on commercial lines. Last week, Aviatrix Amelia Earhart Putnam took off from Oakland “to establish the feasibility of circling the globe by commercial air travel” and “to determine just how human beings react under strain and fatigue” (Mar. 29, 1937).